Thing 21: Podcasts

This is another example of a Thing that can be very attractive for some people but not exactly for me. The thing is I do not own an iPod nor an MP3-player and do not plan to acquire one soon. Maybe a should!

I have to admit that the first two podcasts I "listened" to I was expecting to also see images or a video... Yeah... then I got it! This was just for listening.

First I visited the City of Los Angeles Public Library Teen Podcast and I listened to an interview and also learned about the Teen services. The sound seems to be good quality but from my computer I can only barely hear what they were saying. The problem was not the podcast but that I don't have earphones to better listen or that from my PCs the highest volume is not enough for me. This, I am afraid, applied to all the podcasts I tried.

Also I visited the Education Podcast Network in the hope to listen to some educational podcasts but whenever I tried to listen to any of them I received the following Note: "Unable to open RSS feed".

Then I tried a podcast about Frank Sinatra called "The Frank Truth". Since I don't like Frankie well I moved out pretty soon.

One that I found interesting was the "Free talk live", a radio show where they were talking about the profiling from some Border Patrol agents towards people with Hispanic names. They talked about the case of a Carlos González guy who frankly has been constantly persecuted by the Border Patrol agents in Laredo, Texas.

I also tried something called "Great Smokey Mountains" where a professor teaches people how to make clicking sounds like African Bushmen but again... a Note appeared telling me: "Quick Time is missing software required to perform this operation. Unfortunately not available on Quick Time server".

Could a Podcast work on a library? Perhaps. There seems to be many patrons listening to something on their iPods or MP3-players so why not!

Thing 20: YouTube

Oh, my! I never thought I would be raving about the YouTube possibilities. This experience has been enlightening, I have been forced to visit YouTube and watch some videos, library related videos, and now I want my library to do something about it. I wish we could have a link in our web page directing patrons to the Library's own video at YouTube.
I have seen some great examples of attracting videos that our patrons might love to see about their own Fort Worth Library:

The video "Discover a new world at Columbus, Ohio" is a wonderful example to show Columbus, Ohio citizens know all the resources the library has to offer like Story times, ILL, High Speed Internet, quantity of books own by the library, meeting rooms, helpful staff and much more!

There was another interesting video called "Ray of Light" by the St. Joseph County Public Library version, in which you can see from before the sun arises what is going on at the library: the guard does his rounds, opens the door, staff arrives and start pulling off the books and doing all sorts of activities the people never see when they visit the library.

There is one video for the New York Library where different recognized personalities talk about their love for libraries and what a library can do to help other people in these dire times. The "Shout it Out for Your Library" video ask for public support in the voices of Bette Middler, Ellen Burstyn, Nora Ephron, Jeff Daniels, Mario Batalli, Amy Tan and her little Yorkie and many more.

There are also videos to explain the TexShare Databases 24/7 services available for Public Libraries. Even the City of Plano, Texas has one advertising their library services. Surely we at the Fort Worth Library can have one too, can't we?

Thing 19: Google Docs

Again, there is nothing mentioned about writing our comments on this Thing.
It is easy to work with Google Docs, apparently, because I wasn't able to find the Share with others option from the drop down menu after clicking on the Share button.

Hopefully someone will understand what am I saying and help me with it. Is anyone revising my work? I haven't received any comments and a fellow coworker says he receives comments anytime he posts something new!

Thing 18: Wikis

Ok. It doesn't say to post anything about Wikis but I decided to at least made some brief comments.
I like working with Wiki but I couldn't find the way to change the title of one of my sub-pages.
I was able to upload some photographs but not others because of size and, of course, I don't know how to change the size of the photos so you will find that I don't have enough photos in one of the sub-pages.
It has been fun working with this Thing!

Thing 17: LibWorm

I like the idea of not having to open accounts. So far I have so many (I can't use the same user name on all of them--it beats me!!!) that even though I wrote almost all the user names and passwords I still have some problems! I totally forgot the password for my e-mail account and had to change it. Now I have it on paper. I guess I can't rely on my memory anymore!

Using the name of my library I found many entries... the last one from April 29 of this year but many are very old.

It also has older job postings for positions that have been already fulfilled and since we are on a freeze hiring I don't think we will be seeing anymore of those postings (at least for the time being...hopefully!).

I tried the Feed Categories... have you read the Art Librarian? All I can say is that I don't find it "interesting" but "boring". Please go and read it and tell me what you think. This is similar to Twitter but with more words.

By Subject Categories is more interesting since you can choose which subject you are interested in and read the latest news. Other thing I like is that you can save some articles to read them later, if you happen to find the time to do it, and save your own comments too!

By Tags is even better. I found an article about Texas Librarians raising money for damaged libraries by showing off their tattoos in a calendar! The comments are fun to read.

Could it be useful at our libraries?... perhaps, but in these times when libraries are short of staff and overloaded with work one has to ponder: Does librarians have enough time for all these Things?

Thing 16: LibraryThing

How to start explaining my tribulations? I thought I was doing fairly well, with some ups and downs, but I never thought LibraryThing would be the one to break me.

I have been very, very frustrated because I simply haven't been able to find the ThingLang, or MarcThing or ISBN check. I have tried looking on "search" with obviously no results.

On the positive side I was able to start cataloguing some of my favorite books but the process is slow since it doesn't recognize my lists: I for sure never wrote the ISBN numbers or saved an image of the cover and therefore I have to be doing it one by one (searching by author and selecting the books I have read from them). I would like to know if is possible to select several book to be added with just one key stroke. I haven't been able to find that either.

I also like the book recommendations and the possibility to write a review for new books.

I quit writing my advance on the 23 Things because of my frustration... now I am just going to continue with the next one hoping it won't be as frustrating as this one.

Thing 15: Digg

I went to Digg and digged and after lots of browsing came to the conclusion that it is not useful for me personally. For that case a prefer to read the online newspapers instead of relying on other peoples idea of which type of information is more viewed.

As for the use of this Thing at my library... perhaps patrons can rate the quality of the workshops or events they attend at their libraries?

I need to kepp asking my eternal question: Who has the time to keep up with so many Things and still be able to work and have a personal life?